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Zwölf Gedichte aus 'Liebesfrühling', Op 37

Introduction

Robert Schumann had long taken the music of his beloved Clara as a starting-point for some of his own works – for example the Impromptus sur une Romance de Clara Wieck Op 5, as well as passages in the Davidsbündlertänze Op 6, and the variations on Clara’s Andantino in the Concerto sans orchestre Op 14. An officially shared work between husband and wife, however, was a new departure. This may well have taken as its justification a collaboration between two talented members of another supremely musical family. Three of Felix Mendelssohn’s Op 8 songs (published in 1828 but composed rather earlier), and three of the Op 9 (published in 1830) are, in fact, by his sister Fanny. This was still something of a secret in 1841, but the Mendelssohns and Schumanns were on intimate terms in Leipzig, and the latter may well have been told in confidence of this shared project where the works of Fanny had come into the public ken thanks to the reputation of her famous brother. Of course Clara was a celebrity in her own right as a pianist. It is to Schumann’s credit that he never envisaged making a secret of a shared project between him and his wife; on the contrary he seems to have been proud of her work and anxious to celebrate their relationship with some sign of mutual musical endeavour.

He had long encouraged Clara to turn to the composition of lieder. On 13 March 1840 he had written to his fiancée: ‘Why not write a song! Once you’ve begun you just can’t stop. It is simply too tempting.’. In reply Clara was less optimistic: ‘I can’t compose. It makes me very sad at times, but it is really impossible. I have no talent for it. But don’t think that that is because of laziness. A song, you say. No, I simply cannot. In order to write a song, to comprehend a text completely, this requires intelligence.’ Robert knew his bride-to-be was very intelligent, and he did not give up. A month after their marriage (in October 1840) he encouraged her to set a text by Robert Burns, but to no avail. It was only in December 1840 that she decided to surprise him with a Christmas present of three songs, one setting of Burns (perhaps the same one suggested earlier in the year) and two by Heine (these songs will be heard in a later volume of this series). Clara’s own estimation of these works (‘naturally of no value … only very feeble attempts …’) was not shared by her enthusiastic husband: ‘I was delighted by the three songs, in which she gushes like a girl and is much more compositionally precise than before. We now have the clever idea of interspersing them with some of mine and having them printed.’

As it turned out, these Christmas songs were not included in the shared venture. Instead Schumann decided to return to a favourite source, Ruckert’s Liebesfrühling, to find texts for a completely new cycle. He was so enthused with this idea that he had completed nine songs within a week (Monday 4th to Monday 11th January 1841). In the marriage diaries (where it was usual for the pair to post messages, sometimes concerning issues where it was judged more tactful not to confront each other face-to-face) he urged Clara to so the same – ‘Now Clara should also compose a few from the Liebesfrühling. Oh, do it, Klärchen!’ In the same entry however, he writes of Clara being in pain as a result of her first pregnancy (‘Clara has had to suffer a great deal – from pain, which she gladly tolerates on my account’). She was clearly unable to write the songs at this time, but Schumann went ahead with his plans. In April he wrote to the publisher Kistner informing him that ‘my wife has written some very interesting songs, which have inspired me to compose others.’ He thus broached the idea of issuing these works in a single book Clara had begun to work on any Rückert settings.

It was only in June 1841 that Clara settled down to work, probably with the intention of making a birthday present for her husband. Her initial reaction was typically negative: ‘Composing just won’t work – I sometimes just want to hit myself on my stupid head! … I sat around composing quite a bit this week, and produced four Rückert poems for my beloved Robert. I just hope that they please him a little.’

Please him they did. Clara’s entry in the marriage diary tells us that the ‘very delighted’ Robert treated the songs ‘with great respect’ and that he wanted to ‘publish them with some of his own which makes me very happy.’ Only one of the four songs composed in that June – Die gute Nacht, die ich dir sage – was not included in the cycle; it concludes this disc, however, following Robert Schumann’s choral setting of the same poem. The finished cycle was not published by Kistner as Schumann had first envisaged, but by Breitkopf und Härtel in two books. He took care however that the work was engraved in time to surprise his wife on her 22nd birthday, 13 September 1841. The work was given two separate opus numbers: it was Robert’s Op 37, and Clara’s Op 12.

Recordings

Schumann’s songs are among the greatest musical achievements of the nineteeth century, and this is the perfect release with which to mark the composer’s 200th birthday. This marvellous collection comprises Schumann’s complete songs, presented for ...» More

'Excellent performances and recording offer superb advocacy of late songs by Schumann and, even more affecting, by Clara … This, the fourth offer ...'At a time when the multinational labels fill their booklets with gushing hype about the artists, Hyperion's documentation puts all to shame: as in hi ...» More

'The performances give unalloyed pleasure. Lott's still-radiant soprano combines beautifully with the vibrant, musky mezzo of Kirchschlanger, while Jo ...'I'll leave you to experience the conjuring for yourself. For conjuring it is: any element of the didactic is totally absent in this seamless garment ...» More

Heaven shed a tear That thought to lose itself in the sea. The mussel came and locked it in: My pearl shall you now be. You shall not fear the waves, I shall bear you calmly through. O you, my pain, O you, my joy, You tear of heaven in my breast! Grant, heaven, that with a pure soul I guard the purest of your drops.

This song is in aria style, the pulsating syncopations of the accompaniment suggesting the inevitable delivery of a fine cantilena. The tune soon comes, and it is indeed mellifluous, and even memorable, even if the prosody is not the best that the composer ever conceived – the leaden crotchets on the unimportant word ‘hat’ twice in three bars might have been avoided. It is as if the words are being put to an already existent tune. It is clear that not every aspect of this collaboration has been recorded, and Schumann might have thought it appropriate to use one of his wife’s melodies to announce the set. This would certainly account for this slight mismatch of word and tone. The modulation to the flattened submediant (F major in the original key of A at ‘Die Muschel kam’) is purely Schumannesque; it is a progression which encourages the composer to withdraw into his shell, as if confiding the most confidential of secrets. His serious attention to the story of the tear and the gallant mussel is such that we are not encouraged even to smile at the strange imagery of the poem. When you are a composer of this réclame it is accepted that the whole world of poetry, even the most sentimental, is your oyster. The gently comforting sequences contrasting the sacred ‘you’ and the protective ‘I’ (‘Du sollst nicht vor den Wogen zagen’ followed by ‘Ich will hindurch dich ruhig tragen’) descend the stave in courtly obeisance. The cadence at ‘ruhig tragen’ is one of these where the tenderness of Schumann the lover almost takes on a physical manifestation so clearly does it conjure a sense of selfless devotion.

This leads to a return to the tonic key and a second verse of poetry to clinch the song and elucidate the imagery. The poet (now singing in a more virile mezzo forte) reveals himself – what a surprise! – as the mussel man standing behind the analogies of the first verse. The contrasting, and yet interdependent, imageries of ‘Schmerz’ and ‘Lust’, typical of Ruckert, are already familiar from Widmung in the Myrthen cycle, and other Rückert works like Schubert’s Lachen und Weinen. The word ‘reinsten’ is the highest and brightest of the song, so pure that it pings into life unadulterated by any accompaniment for the duration of its first crotchet. A closer reading of this strophe reveals why Schumann has chosen this lyric to begin the cycle: the shell of his own talent is encasing and protecting the less confident teardrops of Clara’s own creative inspiration. (It is clear that she was near to tears quite often when attempting to compose.) In the same way the composer seems to pledge that the published songs of Op 37 will enclose and protect hers, giving them an outer casing to discourage attack by the outside world. It was no secret that Schumann regarded himself as Clara’s mentor and teacher in this respect, as much as simply being her partner (although there was nothing simple about this partnership for either of them). She certainly looked to him for guidance in all matters musical. Here he undertakes, for better or worse, to re-work and polish her composing efforts as surely as a pearl hidden in the shell is coaxed into being by a similar process. That Robert took this task seriously is shown by the phrase ‘Den reinsten deiner Tropfen hüte’ where this carapace-maker writes something beautiful enough to set the heart beating faster. It is clear that he regards Clara’s musical ideas as pure and delightful, but needing some help to achieve their final form. Thus it is that a tiny word like ‘Tropfen’ (drops) is made to last seven-and-a-half beats in the vocal line while the accompaniment embellishes the note from beneath, turning something initially artless and simple into a sophisticated pedal point. In this way Robert promises not only to guard Clara’s moments of inspiration, but to expand and enrich them.

The postlude, appended to the song rather than deriving from it organically, is like a private message. It is nothing less than a quotation from Giordano’s celebrated song Caro mio ben. We have already noted the Italianate mood of the introduction, but why this aria antica at this point? A look at the entire text of the song provides a possible explanation:

My dear love, believe this at least That without you my heart languishes. Your faithful one is always sighing, Desist, oh cruel one, from such anger.

With the various ups-and-downs of married life it seems entirely likely that the addition of this musical tag to the end of the song should be taken as a plea for reconciliation after a quarrel. Indeed, on certain occasions some of Robert’s critical comments about Clara’s compositions were known to have annoyed her. It seems possible that the whole of Der Himmel hat eine Träne geweint might be seen in the light of an unrecorded tiff between husband and wife concerning this project. (We remember that at the time when Robert was most enthusiastic about these songs, Clara was hardly in the mood to write them.) The senior composer of the duo wants to make the point that his insistence on fostering her drops of inspiration is only the result of his complete love and admiration. The gentle cadence with which this quotation ends betokens the peace of perfect understanding.

This is the third – and last – song of introduction in the cycle. In the first, Clara’s songwriting gift has been introduced, but we are yet to see the person behind that precious tear. In the second, Robert has stormed onto the set thanks to Clara’s song of springtime passion; and here Clara (surely personified by the female singer in the cycle) is introduced in person thanks to Robert who returns the favour. This has all been carefully planned like a succession of speeches at a wedding. Apart from the duets, this is the only song by Schumann himself which seems suitable to be sung by the soprano or mezzo, whereas Clara’s songs in the set, all three of them, are more suitable for female performance.

This is a typical Schumann one-pager, if not quite as potent as some of the others of its type – Du bist wie eine Blume for example. But it makes a lovely opening to a group, or even to a recital, providing the singer is confident enough to live up to expectations of being a nightingale. The opening, despite its overall marking of ‘Innig’, is rather pomposo, as if to paint the solid bourgeois status (‘werten, grossen, reichen’) of the addressees. There is also a note of teasing in all this as if the singer is secretly making fun of important people who take themselves too seriously. We hear this in the way we stay for a long time in the home key of A flat major (here it is sung a tone lower) – ceremonial music for those rather lacking in imagination.

After this, the change to a piano dynamic coincides with a shift to E flat major. The word ‘Nachtigall’ sets off a Bewegung that delicately flies and wafts in marked contrast to the opening mini-processional. This modulation is made to point the word ‘eine’ in loving confirmation of the fact that Clara is surely one of a kind. The inner voice on the treble stave consists of mellifluous semiquavers craftily propelling the vocal line upward as if the bird were flying in circles in her search for an ideal spot. With the word ‘entlang’ it alights on the mediant key of C major – the most exotic destination in the restricted itinerary of this song’s travelling. The music for ‘Räumt mir eines ein’ is more commanding in tone and leads to the charming pay-off line ‘ich will es euch bezahlen mit Gesang’. The postlude is the purest Schumann, delicate and gentle, small-scale in its demands on the stretch of the hands, but requiring a cantabile that betokens a singer with much heart. The composer does not forget that the he is describing a tiny bird whose song is brief but eloquent. At its conclusion, the nightingale signs off by repeating a little motif, a tiny call resembling a fragment of birdsong: quavers rise to semiquavers, phrased away as if on the wing. We hear this twice. In other hands this may have been over-winsome, but Schumann manages it adorably for there is a cheeky self-respect in this music that saves it from being too sentimental.

The final cadence, three mezzo staccato chords, make it clear that this bird has the feminine flounce of a flirtatious soubrette. But this is only a tantalising glimpse. O ihr Herren encapsulates the earnest and respectful side of Clara, as much as her sense of fun and fantasy. In the context of the Schumanns’ shared career, the words can be taken to refer to the life of a performer (the singer-nightingale) versus that of a creator (the composer-nightingale). It emphasises that the writing of songs needs peace and quiet. If the famous piano virtuoso could only find a ‘stilles Plätzchen’ (and she has done so, surely, in her marital home – apart, that is, from all the cooking and cleaning and washing-up, not to mention getting ready for the new baby) she will be able to compose the songs her husband eagerly awaits from her pen.

The poem’s opening concept could only have been voiced in the high summer of German Romanticism. The idea of drawing the whole season of spring into oneself – the beauty of which will inhabit one’s inner being as a heartfelt dream – is a notion which typifies Innigkeit. This is notoriously untranslatable into a single English word, but Martin Cooper once described it as ‘a variety of warm, intimate and meditative emotion, essentially self-conscious, and therefore dangerously allied to sentimentality, but saved, at least in its nobler manifestations, by a genuine childlike simplicity’. Schubert, that most innig of composers, liked this text well enough to contemplate adding a Rückert choral setting to a work list already rich in important solo songs. Sadly it remained only a sketch.

Cooper’s description of childlike simplicity here hits the mark, for it is an essentially childlike quality to dream – indeed, every artist struggles to retain the freshness and openness of a child’s reactions, and of its capacity for fantasy. There are numbers of songs by Schumann which affirm his fascination with fairytales – Aus alten Märchen from Dichterliebe and the lesser-known Es leuchtet meine Liebe chief among them. This idyllic, even anodyne, text is admittedly weaker than those glittering Heine lyrics, but still Schumann finds ingenious musical means to describe the fanciful process of inventive imaginings. A simple little scale, partially chromatic and harmonised in thirds (a metaphor for complicity between loved ones which runs throughout the piece) descends the stave; this is symbolic of a retreat from the world, a shy determination to withdraw into oneself. Then the phrase is turned on its head and made to ascend in the opposite direction, the pianist’s hands in contrary motion. The hands then re-deploy an octave apart, and lovingly re-converge. Thus an idea is first plucked out of the air, then played with in the mind’s eye, as if a prism held up to the light. Mezzo-staccato quavers leading to the two cadences in the introduction (first to the dominant, then back to the tonic) reflect a glint of simple delight in this innocent musing.

Throughout the song, touches of counterpoint reflect the movement of thought-processes which delight in the contemplation of a delightful idea from every angle. A negative or disappointing concept (‘dass er, der Welt entflogen’) moves in a downward direction but is then contradicted by its antidote (‘hier in der Brust mir blieb’) which rises with optimism to the challenge. The interlocking of these fragments of tune in the piano writing is a metaphor for the laying-down of dreams which, like memories, are separable into threads and strands; it is thus that the brain weaves disparate images into an enduring tapestry. (Mörike understood this so well in his ‘Was webst du für Errinerrung?’ in Wolf’s Im Frühling). Phrases referring to the blue skies, and then the green fields, are set as sequences a tone apart in the stave, a change of musical locale which adds verisimilitude to our sightseeing; to direct our vision, the word ‘hier’ is twice given a demonstrative accent on different notes.

In verse 3 the sighing chromaticism of the accompanying motif which governs the song almost in its entirety is especially effective in denoting that very German compound noun ‘Liebesach.’ This longing for spring involves a measure of pain. One breathless musical phrase succeeds the other as the male singer suddenly takes on the beloved’s tone of voice. It is as if we can hear her sighs in these snatches of melody with scarcely time to breathe between. The phrases ‘Und hier am Busen lehnet’ and then ‘mit süssem Liebes-Ach’ are squeezed by the turn of a harmonic screw, as if a corset were being laced ever tighter by strings of sequences pulled between the hands in contrary motion.

Equally effective is the manner in which the accompaniment adapts to the words which open the poem’s fourth strophe – ‘Sie lehnt sich an’. Listen to how the piano writing, now descending in right-hand intervals of a sixths and sevenths for the first time, suddenly seems to lean and snuggle. Each four-note phrase sinks and wilts towards its resolution; this is erotic and flirtatious music, cosseting rather than corseting, and would equally well describe the sinuous movements of a cat rubbing itself against its master’s legs. A ritardando after ‘in ihres Dichters Brust’ brings back a well-timed forte recapitulation of the opening music.

The song’s final section consists of the poem’s last two strophes. At the end of the previous verse we had encountered a key word in the poem – ‘Frühlingsströme’. This water image is developed further in ‘Da quellen auf die Lieder / Und strömen über sie’, and it is surely this devotional (and perhaps unintentionally priapic) phrase which attracted Schumann to the poem in the first place. It is then that we notice that – long before streams were mentioned in the text – the fluid accompaniment seems to have come at us in waves, bubbling up as if from an invisible source; the accompaniment’s movement now seems suggestive of a river’s cross-currents, and the low notes in the bass line of the postlude are typical of Schumann’s depictions of watery depths such as the Rhine. A slew of mezzo-staccato notes in the accompaniment illustrates the glistening sparks (‘von ihren Funken’) of her gaze, but this is the sole moment of fire in a watery peroration. What has begun as a song about spring has turned into a song about springs. As the whole focus of lyric and music is focused on the all-important ‘her’ it is reaffirmed that the joyful creative floods which rose in Schumann’s breast owed their very existence to Clara. It would be argued by many that the Op 37 songs represented the beginning of a long drought, a period of sluggish tides and low-water marks. But the ingenuity of this music is greater than it is usually given credit for, and it stands as one of the more enduring of the set.

Dearest, what can part us? Can separation? Can separation part us? No. Though we decline to see each other, We wish to be united in our hearts. Mine and thine, thine and mine Is what, my love, we wish to be.

Dearest, what can part us? Forest and heath? Can distance part us? No, our love is not of this earth, We wish to be united in heaven. Mine and thine, thine and mine Is what, my love, we wish to be.

Dearest, what can part us? Happiness and sorrow? Can both part us? No. Whether happiness or grief be granted me, My fate shall be linked with yours. Mine and thine, thine and mine Is what, my love, we wish to be.

Dearest, what can part us? Hatred and envy? Can the world part us? No. Let no one disturb your peace, Never shall we be separated. Mine and thine, thine and mine Is what, my love, we wish to be.

We will never be sure about who wrote exactly what in this cycle. Clearly Clara contributed her three solo songs, but we are uncertain about the level of Robert’s interventions and revisions in these before they went to press. Similarly, there is no way of telling whether fragments of Clara’s melodies (if not finished works) were used by Robert as the starting-point of his song contributions to the set; after all he had already incorporated her piano music into his own, and it is likely that in this project, above all, such cross-fertilisation would once again have taken place. Eric Sams believes, for example, that the very opening melody of the opus may well be based on one of Clara’s tunes; but this remains speculation, and it is unfair to ascribe the weaker passages in the set to Clara’s contributory hand. The three duets in the cycle would also have been obvious areas for collaboration, but it still seems unclear whether Clara officially took some part in writing these.

Liebste, was kann denn uns scheiden? is perhaps the strangest of all Schumann’s duets for two voices. It falls between two stools. It is considered (briefly) as a solo song in the Sams book because it is published in Peters Volume 2; but it is also to be found in the Peters volume of duets (not that it can ever have been a popular recital item as such). It seems arranged for two voices as an afterthought; the female voice is given almost risibly little to do (repetitions of ‘Nein’ and joining with the male singer in the closing line of each strophe). In this performance we redress the balance by asking the mezzo-soprano to take over one of the verses.

The song is marked ‘Heiter’ as if a cheerfully breezy riposte to a great deal of gossip. It appears rather strange that these impassioned rebuttals are given in music which skips merrily by in 6/8. Nonchalance and insouciance are the order of the day, as if it is simply an utter joke to imagine that anything could part this loving pair. There is a distant echo of Ich kann’s nich fassen, nicht glauben from Frauenliebe und -leben where performers have to take care that the potentially rollicking rhythm does not trivialise a consecrated moment in the cycle. Here the piano has short quaver chords that also recall that song; its role is kept to a minimum, as if in secco recitative where the accompanying instrument must be deft enough to catch fleeting vocal cadences on the wing. The lines ‘Ob wir uns zu sehn vermieden / Ungeschieden’ prompt something a little more lyrical – hardly a real tune for the voice, but at least underpinned by a smoother, and typically Schumannesque, falling sequence of chords. This descends the stave and is followed by another half-melody for ‘Wollen wir im Herzen sein’ which duly climbs the stave, ascending to a high G and skirting banality by a very narrow margin. At ‘Mein und dein, dein und mein’ the skipping music, as if the couple were hand-in-hand and swinging their arms, is worthy of the school playground. Indeed the whole song is like a children’s rhyme sung for good luck, a spell where the singers’ confidence attempts to ward away the evil spirits.

As a setting of Rückert’s text the song could easily have been quite different. At ‘Ob wir uns zu sehn vermieden’ the text tells us that the couple are apart as they speak. It is clear that this poem could have borne something defiant and lyrical – closer perhaps to the mood of the concluding strophes of Brahms’s Von ewiger Liebe. But Robert, or Clara, or both, refuse to take this poem seriously. They have each other close to hand, they seem to say, and there they will stay. In Schumann’s defence, it may be that he was deliberately experimenting here with an arioso technique whereby the many words of the poem were meant to sound a recitative – more spoken than sung – as a lead-in to the aria of the next ensemble item. In any event, there is a real contrast of styles between this duet and the one which follows it.

Schumann set these words twice – the second time, in 1849, as an SATB quartet in the Minnespiel Op 101. There the music is celebratory and jubilant, the voices singing together in concerted swathes of appealing melody while the extrovert accompaniment dances in tricky scales, roulades and arpeggios. Here, however, there is quite another interpretation of the words. The music is cast as a simple, steady march (‘Einfach, nicht rasch’) with a spring in its step; much of the time it is in canonical form where the baritone leads the proceedings, the mezzo-soprano following at the wifely distance of a bar. Some of the composer’s other duet-writing shows a penchant for less than smooth and euphonious singing in two parts, particularly when it comes to a clash of texts, where each character puts forth different words simultaneously, and seems to be singing in contradiction of his or her partner (as in Tanzlied for example, also from 1849). This no doubt derives from Schumann’s enthusiasm for the vocal music of Bach where polyphonic strands of music vie with each other in sublime miracles of counterpoint.

Such a phrase could hardly be said to describe this song, but it is also inspired by Schumann’s belief that a mastery of part-writing is essential for all composers. In fact the piece comes across as an exercise for Clara where Robert, personified by the male singer, leads the way. Self-improvement was a major part of the daily activity of the Schumann household, and one can imagine the couple working on this little project together; part-writing for voices was clearly something which did not come as second nature for a piano-playing composer, and this applied to the husband as much as to the wife. The result is a curious piece of music which sounds rather too stiffly didactic for a joyous spring festival. Only towards the end of the song are the voices heard together in harmony; otherwise they vie with each other, each going his or her own way while singing different words from a shared text. The fact that the voices sound an octave apart, other than they seem on paper, adds to the distance between them. This layering effect usually sounds more convincing between equal voices, as in Ländliches Lied Op 29 No 1 for two sopranos; canonical imitation is also a major feature of this piece which is also a work which celebrates the rituals of spring.

What was Schumann thinking of when he set Schön ist das Fest des Lenzes in this manner? The text is an invitation to carpe diem – the ancient spring festival lasts only three days (a fact insisted on rather too repeatedly in this setting) so lovers should not dally. This strikes a poetic note appropriate to a very old German custom, worthy of an expurgated Carmina Burana perhaps. The musical solution proposed here – a march or a dactylic dance in the ancient of a canon – is more Bach than bacchanal. It betokens time-travel where an ancient ceremony is clothed in music of its own time (as imagined by Schumann at least). By 1849 the composer was much more confident in terms of writing for ensemble voices. The somewhat solemn ceremony implied by the duet yields to the sheer Schwung of the quartet where the party takes place in an unashamedly contemporary setting.

This is certainly one of the most accomplished (and one of the two longest) poems in the set, a sweeping cri de cœur which shows this normally most domesticated of poets in an estranged mood (the title of this section of Liebesfrühling is Entfremdet). The repeated appeal for ‘Wings!’ shows that the poet longs to be somewhere very different from where he finds himself. Rather in the manner of the conclusion to Eichendorff’s Frühlingsfahrt, Rückert’s final strophe is a warning against the very exotic travels which he has just longingly described; it seems rather a weak excuse to paint a picture in such glowing colours, and then to say ‘I didn’t mean that after all’. In melting the pinions of sensuality the constraining hand of Biedermeier morality rescues the poem’s (and the poet’s) respectability at the last minute, but we are not convinced that everything is so simply innocuous. That Schumann should have thought of setting such a poem as part of this cycle is also quite revealing. As much as he had longed for marriage and domestic bliss, there was much about his temperament which was totally unsuitable for a shared life; he was essentially a loner, with an imagination even more fertile than the one here displayed by Rückert, and he had an ability to retreat into his dreams whenever he found prevailing circumstances uncongenial. The moral however seems to be that a married man has no business having such thoughts as these.

This song would seem to promise a breath of fresh air after the strange pair of duets that have preceded it. It eventually provides something like that (we are in great need of a song with a fast tempo) but Eric Sams is right to point out that the first page is the weakest. He is also rather unfair to ascribe it to Clara. We have to accept that the great song-writing days of 1840 are over for Schumann himself, and that in this field the quality of inspiration can sometimes be uneven. Twin invocations of ‘Flügel! Flügel’ (the repeat is the poet’s, not the composer’s) are harmonised on two different chords – the first a diminished seventh, the other the first inversion of the dominant seventh of the home key. This is meant to provide an impressive start, but the effect is strangely weak, like an out-of-practice wizard who has taken his wings out of mothballs and is trying out various spells in an attempt to bring them to life. (Out-of-practice musicians have a similar experience with their tails.) The old necromancy works, however; without further warning we find ourselves dispatched on a helter-skelter ride through the first five strophes of the poem, as if on a magic carpet with scarcely a pause for breath.

This is very difficult for the performers who have to work with bar after bar of an unremitting 6/8 rhythm, and a slew of words. The dangers are obvious: a banal rum-ti-tum to the rhythm, and a gabbled text. Constant repetitions of the ubiquitous word ‘Flügel’ where the invocation is followed immediately by a setting of the rest of the poem’s line, without accounting for the separating comma, exacerbate the problem. The piano interludes (between the poem’s second and third strophes, and also between the fourth and fifth) consist of chords bouncing down the stave in sixths. Up until this point there has been a great deal of doubling of the voice line with piano, but these gaps introduce a new freedom. In a curious echo of the previous song in the set, the accompaniment (at ‘Flügel, wie sie Jugend hatte’ and so on) is in canon with the voice line, leading it by half a bar. This provides an air-borne effect, as if between parallel banks of clouds where imagery of mist and roses also implies something luxuriously cushioned and layered. That it is also part of Schumann’s established vocabulary is shown by an earlier use of this same canonic device at ‘die Augen, die Lippen, die Lippen, die Wänglein’ from the Dichterliebe song Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome. This tantalising musical dislocation is clearly an analogue for unattainability – a dream that you chase without quite being able to reach or touch it, or a plan that fails successfully to come together.

The marooned traveller dramatically loses access to this method of transportation in verse 6. Schumann’s marking is ‘Sehr langsam’ and the music seems suddenly paralysed, as if by an all-out transport strike. The accompanist’s right hand, formerly so frenetically active, has nothing to do. Sluggish syncopations in the left seem to pin the vocal line in a stationary position. Even the calls of ‘Flügel’ lose their energy and their exclamation marks, the music for these words a half-hearted echo of what has gone before. Elsewhere the impression is of aimless recitative. The pathos of this situation, if not of this music, recalls Schubert’s Mayrhofer setting Atys. At verse 7, a description of butterflies breaking out of their chrysalis occasions a miniature nature lesson; right-hand semibreves as round as eggs paint the shape of the pupae on the printed page, and the hatching is accompanied by staccato chords (under ‘Raupenleben reift’ and ‘und die Hüll’ entstreift!’) which denote the stirrings of new life, or perhaps (in the absence of a lepidopterist to correct the misconception) the sound of cracking shells.

The music for the eighth verse is perhaps the most tenderly lyrical of the song. A vocal line suddenly rendered sensuous by words which talk of dreams and stars, is supported by mellow bass-clef harmonies, suave thirds which roll down the stave as the singer ascends it, moving towards an impassioned climax. It is here that we hear the voice of Schumann at its most authentic and personal. At the climax of the phrase (‘zu dem Sternentor!’) we encounter one of those little touches whereby the composer attempted to pull various strands of this work together with odd little cyclic procedures: this is the same noble motif of descending chords which forms the basis of the accompaniment to the next song, Rose, Meer und Sonne. And this turns out to be a bridge passage for a return to the hectic tempo of the opening. The accompaniment to the words ‘Doch gewachsenes Gefieder / In der Nächte Duft’ is unusually low in the bass clef as if acknowledging a certain dark and ominous side to the growth of these mutant wings. Once the singer is divested of them (after ‘mir entträufeln seh’ ich’s wieder / An des Morgens Luft’) a new musical motif appears. This seems nothing less than a fanfare of rectitude to celebrate the victory of the forces of light over the forces of darkness. Perhaps the whole poem is a coded catalogue of the temptations to stray that are faced by the married man. There certainly seems something exaggeratedly manly and healthy in this new music built up of simple, wholesome arpeggios without a trace of the dangerous chromaticism that Wagner was later to use for Klingsor’s magic garden and his seductive flower-maidens.

Icarus is dispatched without further ado (or sympathy) into the sea. The text implies that the protagonist thinks of himself as an over-ambitious high-flyer suffering his deserved fate. The last two lines of the poem move ineluctably to a final cadence in Schumann’s most peremptory and banishing manner (as at the end of Es treibt mich hin from the Heine Liederkreis). From his viewpoint it seems that temptation is drowned, and the protagonist lives to fight another day. The seventeen-bar postlude begins with the minor-key fanfare (it can also sound banal if the pianist is not careful) which betokens grim determination to live in the real world rather than to be hijacked by fantasies. There is a brief return to the more chromatic music of the opening, as if a memory of a bad dream. This part of the song is reminiscent of the Heine setting Es leuchtet meine Liebe which also deals with strange nightmares and odd tales. We are left in no doubt at the end that what has seemed seductive at the beginning of the song has to be banished with the help of determination and effort. The message seems to be that it is unhealthy, dangerous even, to be on a permanent high. No doubt Schumann feared that over-use of these wings (and in his youth he had experienced many a flight of fancy, and many a good ride) would eventually lead to a strait-jacket, and the asylum wing of a hospital.

This is one of those Schumann songs with a big tune, a lusciously singable tune, a humdinger melody to be proud of and to sing from the rooftops and to the world. As with the song Stille Tränen2 from the Kerner cycle Op 35 (and the lesser known Liebesbotschaft Op 36) it is the sort of melody with a popular touch that would today make millions as a theme for a multi-million dollar movie. (Schumann could pull such things out of the hat when he wanted to.) It is also a particularly German tune, serious and heartfelt with a hint of the haunting gravitas of a pilgrim’s chorale which would make it suitable for massed voices; indeed, it is this foursquare quality which proves its weakness over the span of a long song such as this. This is because, whatever the felicities of this generous melody, the song as a whole fails to develop in any significant way beyond the first verse.

This is one of those occasions when Schumann relies on his performers to turn up the heat as the song progresses, rather than writing the increasing intensity required into the music itself. The marking (‘Ruhig, die letzten Verse mit steigendem Ausdruck’) is not unique in his output, but it is the kind of abrogation of responsibility – giving the performers carte blanche to find their own way of making the later strophes more expressive – that is more usually found in songs from a much later date.

The poem is organised in ten verses in the following manner: A (the repeated refrain beginning ‘Rose, Meer und Sonne / Sind ein Bild der Liebsten mein’) – B – C [these two strophes compare the beauties of the beloved to the glories of the countryside] – A – D – E – [river and sea imagery] A – F – G – [images of the evening sky and of dawn] plus a final clinching repeat of A. Schumann gratefully adopts the poet’s rondo form and makes an even simpler musical arrangement out of it, as easy as ABC in fact. The wonderful tune is a long-breathed one so the music (though not the density of the accompaniment) for Rückert’s first three verses is the same as for next three, and the three after that, with a coda that is simply a variant of the opening of the big tune. So effectively we have a very simple musical arrangement – a strophic song of three verses, plus an epilogue and an eloquent piano postlude.

At the beginning, two bars of gently undulating arpeggios in the key of B major (on this recording the song is performed a tone lower) make their mellow and mellifluous appearance rooted in the bass clef. The first appearance of the tune is thus accompanied by a ripple of modest semiquavers. The power of the melody for ‘Rose, Meer und Sonne’ defies analysis – two bars on the tonic (I), a change to the subdominant (IV), and then back to the tonic in second inversion. So it goes – nothing recherché in harmonic terms, but the tune itself is blessed with nobility as befits a litany of noble love and devotion, a song fit for a knight in shining armour. One is somehow reminded of the tone of some of the music in Brahms’s great cycle Die schöne Magelone (the song Treue Liebe dauert lange for example), an extremely sophisticated work which similarly promotes strophic simplicity and popular balladry as old German virtues fit for a gallant troubadour.

The tune may have been thought to be complete at the end of the poem’s first verse, and in a way the most interesting part of it is. But Schumann appends a further eight bars which seem to grow inevitably from that original melody. This new idea, repetitive and sequential, is spun out in masterful fashion, not only encompassing the four lines of the poem’s second strophe, but also the four lines after that. The music for the third strophe is literally a heightened repetition of what has gone before: the melody for ‘Aller Glanz, ergossen’ is recycled up a major third for ‘Alle Farben ringen’. The end of the second strophe has seen the music shepherded in the direction of the relative minor (G sharp minor in the original key); by the end of the third we find ourselves in the mediant key of D sharp major. An arpeggio figure, now noticeably filled out in thirds and fourths (in comparison to the more sparse opening figurations) prepares us for the return to the home key of B major. That mediant-tonic switch is wonderfully effective, grandiose even, and very much in line with the weightily eloquent tone of the rest of the song. Now we are aware that the music is growing like a river that flows ever more widely, and ever more deeply, as it gathers its tributaries on its way to the sea. Indeed, the imagery of the second musical verse (strophes 4 to 6 of the poem where the new idea begins with ‘Alle Ströme haben / Ihren Lauf auf Erden bloss’) confirms that this is exactly the reaction Schumann expects of us.

The rest of the song follows the same patterns in strophic manner. The accompaniment to the third musical verse replaces thirds and fourths with filled-out whole triads and sixths; the vocal line has been marked firstly piano, then mezzo forte and lastly forte. When this moment comes, the pianist feels as if he has reached the last verse of a great hymn which he is accompanying on a mighty organ for a vast congregation in a cavernous cathedral. This is fun, and satisfying in a way, but the human voice can only do so much, and the intended effect (‘an outpouring of praise and adoration gathering in intensity like a force of nature until the whole cosmos is consumed in a great welter of flame, fragrance and song’ as Sams puts it) is simply beyond the means of any two performers equipped with single larynx and keyboard. Here, if anywhere in Schumann’s output, one expects the piano version to be faded out and taken over by a vast orchestra playing the same tune in the emotive manner of film-music climaxes.

Lacking these sort of tricks to maximise an invention that is only good as far as it goes, the song fails to achieve the true lift-off that can only be provided in this form by organic development and intense word-to-music perceptions. The last verse of the poem provided one final chance to hear the big tune at its loudest. At last we hear some new details in the vocal line; the octave leap in the phrase ‘fasst mein ganzes Leben ein’ is a marvellous depiction of the all-embracing nature of the singer’s love, and the composer allows himself a final extravagant cadence, an Italianate turn for the repeat of the same words.

The twelve-bar piano postlude is even more worthy of note; it is similar to that of Dichterliebe of course, or that for Kerner’s Stille Tränen; all three share a dreamy, poetic atmosphere, and they all might be cited as classic examples of Schumannesque Innigkeit. The ending of this song is another example of an intensely passionate setting capped not by a barnstorming finale but by a final cadence that is almost shy and withdrawn. The pianist finds himself stretching ever upwards as if aspiring to a love that he scarcely deserves; this is symbolised by an ascent of singing bell-like tones in the little finger of the right hand: F sharp in the tenor register rises to the C sharp a fifth above and, in the next bar, an F sharp above that. These notes fall away on sighing semiquaver figurations and are underpinned by an ascending chromatic theme in the left hand. Eric Sams has pinned this down to a coded reference to Clara, one of several which permeate the composer’s work. All of this is the purest Schumann, and we should be grateful. Why then is the song not one at the top of anybody’s list? Once again Sams has the answer: ‘the melody and harmony are so decorous, the rhythmic pattern so square-cut and static, that the final picture is hardly more than a huge herbaceous border in tone’. This is an unkind dig, but one that hits its mark. We cannot help feeling that if Schumann had tended his garden with a little more effort (perhaps if he had not been so easily pleased with his nine Rückert songs written in a week in January 1841) we might have had a great song in Rose, Meer und Sonne, rather than simply a lovely one.

O sun, O sea, O rose! Just as the sun triumphantly rises Above stars that stood in the sky, Which one after the other gradually faded Till all had vanished in a glow, Thus it was when I found you, my love: You came, and what my heart had ever loved, Vanished now in your light.

O sun, O sea, O rose! Just as the sea opens its embrace To the rivers that have meandered And ardently poured themselves into it, Until they found peace in its depths, Thus it was when I found you, my love: My wounded heart’s longing Was set free in you.

O sun, O sea, O rose! Just as in a thousand ways spring’s fresh green Breaks out all around, And all argue as to who should wear the wreath, Until regally the rose appears, Thus did I entwine myself about you: Life’s wreath must now blossom Around you.

If we have had some reservations about Rose, Meer und Sonne, these are increased considerably here. The idea of a complementary song, a strengthening of the internal links in the cycle by having two adjacent lieder related in text, is a potentially good one. It was one to be adopted by later composers, and we owe some of the loveliest segue moments in Wolf’s Mörike and Goethe songbooks to this sort of cross-referencing. Nevertheless, here we can scarcely get away from the feeling that Schumann composed two songs for the price of one. It would have made better (or a least more symmetrical) sense to have given this text to Clara to compose, were not the poem so unequivocally addressed to the ‘Liebste’ – the female loved one. The idea that some of the leaden aspect of this music may be laid at the composer Clara’s door is tempting for the Robert Schumann enthusiast, but unfair. He did boast about having written these nine songs very quickly (and seemingly all on his own) at the beginning of 1841.

This poem is very different from its predecessor in metrical terms, and this accounts for a great deal of the difficulty in writing a continuation – let alone a worthy sequel. Something resembling the beginning of the previous song’s tune is quoted at ‘O Sonn’, O Meer, O Rose!’ But that is as far as it goes; the rest of it refuses to fit the rhythm of the new words. The rolling liquidity of the earlier melody, with its graciously rippling accompaniment, is replaced by another march, slightly reminiscent of Schön ist das Fest des Lenzes, and also rather stuck in the spring mud. The dotted rhythms of the vocal line are rather martially doubled in the accompaniment, but the note of triumph described in the text eludes the mood of the music despite these mini-fanfares. The fact that the composer wants Op 37 No 9 and No 10 at the same speed keeps the music deliberate and meaningful; this is just as well as this music would sound even less consequential at a fast tempo. The piano interludes (the first of which is after ‘die am Himmel stunden’) seem genuinely Schumannesque: the right hand of the pianist sings a new and elegant melody as the inner voices throb with empathy. After two bars, this tune is taken up in canonical fashion by the voice for ‘Ein Schimmer nach dem andern leis’ erblich’. Then the same music all over again, this time a tone lower, first for the piano and then the voice (‘Bis alle sind in einem Glanz geschwunden’). That the strophic implications of this passage have not exactly been thought through is demonstrated in the third verse where ‘königlich/Eintretend’ (a participle attached grammatically to its adverb) is split into two by the interlude. Blame the poet, if you like, for a fancy and fussy enjambment which he does not employ in the previous strophes, but this messy detail alone is a sign of undue haste on the composer’s part.

The music for ‘So hab ich, Liebste, dich gefunden’ is a kind of a bridge passage to the return of the tonic. Here we hear, once again, a ghost of the tune of Rose, Meer und Sonne and the vocal line comes to its conclusion with a repeat of the words ‘geschwunden in dich’. The idea of vanishing in the radiance of another person is beautifully caught in the harmonies of this passage, a sequence in diminution, which appears to shrink shyly into itself like a wilting flower as it diffidently arrives at the final cadence in mid-bar. In this case, the sense of surrender implicit in the harmony, emphasised by the halting ritardando, suits all three strophes of the poem. The postlude is drawn entirely from the previous song. There it had seemed very much part of what had gone before; after this song, the reappearance of this music seems to have been pressed into service to save time. The effect is rather laboured, an impression which increases with each of the three strophic verses. We are reminded that we have liked the previous song rather better. On this occasion Schumann seems to have allowed his enthusiasm for the poetry, and for the whole idea of a shared project with Clara, to cloud his self-critical faculties.

Truly as the sun shines, Truly as the cloud weeps, Truly as the flame flashes, Truly as spring blossoms, As truly did I feel Holding you in my embrace: You love me, as I love you, I love you, as you love me.

The sun may cease to shine, The cloud may weep no more, The flame may flash and fade, The spring may blossom no more! But we shall embrace And always feel: You love me, as I love you, I love you, as you love me.

The final piece of this cycle brings the voices together in close harmony for the first time. Eric Sams has shown that the melody is a transposed variant of the opening tune of Der Himmel hat eine Träne geweint – a unifying detail so subtle that is not at all obvious until it has been pointed out. Once again this duet prompts comparisons with a later work – the Minnespiel of 1849 where this text is cast as an exceptionally beautiful quartet which finishes that work in a what might be curiously, if accurately, described as a blaze of radiant calm. 1840 was the year of Schumann’s great solo songs, but there was one aspect of vocal music with which he was more comfortable in 1849: this was in the writing of ensembles. The year 1841 and the duets of the Liebesfrühling cycle come somewhere between the two periods, both in terms of inspiration and technical assurance. We thus look in vain in So wahr die Sonne scheinet for the sumptuous beauties of later duets like Er und Sie or In der Nacht.

The marking is ‘Einfach’ (simple) but there is nothing very simple about two highly talented and temperamental people making a successful life together. By January of 1841 – four months into the marriage – fantasies of nuptial bliss had already been replaced by incursions of reality. Life was not to prove a bed of roses for either of the partners in one of Germany’s most famous love stories. One must remember that the Schumanns were famous at the time, the details of their triumphant struggle to be together well known to other artists; this must have added to the pressure to remain a perfect couple, and an example to other lovers. The issuing of various shared portraits and medallions in the Schumanns’ lifetime implies that they took seriously these responsibilities as icons of the Romantic age.

So if there is nothing very exceptional on paper about this simple little chorale, it is suffused with the deepest feeling. We hear in this music, as solemn as a reiteration of marriage vows, the idealism that has resulted in this extraordinary union of souls, and the determination on both sides that it should run its course whatever the difficulties.

Sometimes the Bewegung of this music suggests a steady march against all the odds. Unimaginable natural disasters (beginning with ‘Die Sonne mag verscheinen’ and ‘die Wolke nicht mehr weinen’ and continuing to the flowerless spring of ‘Der Frühling nicht mehr blühn!’) are catalogued simply to demonstrate that such love is impervious to outside disruptions of any kind. It is this very self-contained and private quality which is so successfully mirrored in this music and the form that Schumann has chosen for it. The hymn-like simplicity is an indication of Schumann’s Germanic seriousness, a quality which he valued in himself and others, and which he took to descend from the great German medieval painters, and from Luther and Bach. (Schubert, for example, as an Austrian, could claim such a lineage only at one remove, but he saw its importance to some of his poets; he usually restricts his chorale songs to settings of such German poets of the older generation as Klopstock and Matthisson). Duty, sincerity, devotion and loyalty – the music in its deliberate austerity invokes such serious values as these; melismas and fancy technical tricks such as counterpoint are banished in the interests of unity. The couple speaks, for the first time, as if in one voice.

The music contains a rather mysterious hidden quotation from a song of November 1840 – the Kerner setting Auf das Trinkglas eines verstorbenen Freundes2. The piano postlude to this haunting masterpiece twice contains the melody of the closing words of this duet – ‘Du liebst mich, wie ich dich / Dich lieb’ ich, wie du mich’ – one voice answering another in a dialogue between the pianist’s hands. This fragment of melody (in both works it is in the key of E flat major) seems to be a Schumannesque tag betokening an oath of eternal devotion. In the case of the Kerner setting it is in all likelihood a promise-in-music to the memory of Ludwig Schunke, Schumann’s dear friend who had died at the age of 24. In So wahr dei Sonne scheinet the same music concludes the song with verbalised assurances of love, as if setting a seal of eternity on emotions which earlier had been too deep for words. In any event, this music, a stylistic departure from the Op 37 manner of either contributor, seems an ideal way, innig to the nth degree, of bringing this collaborative work to a close.

There is a setting of this lyric – prancing and energetic, but of no great significance, by Hugo Wolf. This was written in 1878, a full decade before his mature lieder.

Truly as the sun shines, truly as the cloud weeps, truly as the flame flashes, truly as spring blossoms; as truly did I feel holding you in my embrace: you love me, as I love you, I love you, as you love me. The sun may cease to shine, the cloud may weep no more, the flame may flash and fade, the spring may blossom no more! But we shall embrace and always feel: you love me, as I love you, I love you, as you love me.

Schumann was fond of the verse of Friedrich Rückert, well known for his patriotic poems in the War of Liberation against Napoleon’s armies and as an Orientalist and prolific poet. Robert and Clara chose 12 poems from the volume Liebesfrühling to set to music in a shared opus that ends with the duet ‘So wahr die Sonne scheinet’. As in ‘Ich denke Dein’, loving unanimity is expressed here by the perfect rhythmic accord of the two singers. None of the other Liebesfrühling songs are in this manner, the Innigkeit (‘intimacy’, ‘inwardness’) here the perfect conclusion to the work.